


The secret ministry of frost

by middlemarch



Series: DeQuincey's iPad [3]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Co-Parenting, Divorce, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:23:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7642288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed hears a voice from another room, another life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The secret ministry of frost

The first time Mary called from the bedroom, Jed kept rinsing out the dishes. They’d left them stacked beside the sink the night before and he knew she would like to see the default granite counters empty when she emerged, the low hum of the dishwasher a mellow counter-point to the local NPR station. It was a Saturday that Eliza had Owen, so there would be no instant when the carefully articulated PBS Kids show du jour would take over the living room and leach into the kitchen nook they had created with some Ikea benches and a round table too big for a bistro’s sidewalk. Before Mary had moved in, he had struggled the weekends without Owen. He’d tried to plan outings for himself as if he were his own nanny—a French class, breakfast with Jonathan, a painful run he always regretted since he could just have easily gone to swim at the Y. Since Mary had agreed seven months ago and had jettisoned her cheaper furniture with her lease but moved in her calico Plum, an antique maple rocker, a collection of watercolors acquired at a particularly high-yield MassArt student art sale, and more handmade patchwork pillows than he thought one woman had any use for, the weekends his son spent with his mother had become valuable, a gift.

They were a glimpse of another universe where Jed and Mary had met earlier with a little less history between then, a time for a courtship without snack-time or quiet time or a perpetual themed birthday party to attend. They stayed in bed later and made love, sometimes in the shower, with the varying degrees of abandon being alone allowed; he liked that he could not predict then if Mary would cry out loudly or only gasp his name in his ear, “Jedediah, oh love, oh, oh, Jedediah.” She did not rush to pick up her lingerie from the floor where he’d hurled it with the intense, temporary antipathy the silk chemises induced when he couldn’t wait to touch her thigh or belly, the slender stripe of skin the lacy shoulder straps concealed. She brought him a cup of coffee in bed and he could balance it on the squat tower of books on his bedside table without the fear of Owen spilling it with his morning burst of kinetic energy; the Oliver Sacks compendium was a sturdy foundation Jed never moved as it was enough to see the name in its forthright font, celebrating neurology on its unbroken spine. Mushrooms, chanterelles and morels, appeared on the menu and shallots and not one carrot or apple slice. They did the household chores efficiently, uninterrupted, so they could go for long walks in the afternoon and only hold each other’s hand. They took the T to restaurants everyone said were worth a try and didn’t worry about losing another glove; Jed ordered the cheese plate for dessert and Mary cheekily encouraged him to lick the Madeira caramel from her top lip before he opened the front door to the brownstone, even if it was cold, especially if it was snowing. 

Jed missed Owen but living with Mary, it was tolerable in a way it had never been before. The apartment was no longer Owen’s house, purposeless without him, but their home, the “first” modifier internally italicized and implicit. A move coordinated with Eliza and the school-year would be complicated and they were in no rush, but he knew this apartment could not manage much more than he’d already asked of it. There were talks to be had, a multitude of them, long and short, on the T and driving to the market, after bedtime sitting on the couch carefully buttressed by Mary’s pillows, Plum in the window, about the how and when and where of the future. A summit loomed with Eliza, but while Mary had been living with him for seven months, they’d only gotten engaged ten weeks ago, so there was an unspoken agreement that they would defer embarking on any of that. They had set a wedding date and told Eliza, who exceeded Jed’s expectations with her calmly congratulatory response and met Mary’s, whom she liked very much. They had agreed to get married on the Vineyard and planning the wedding and working and taking care of Owen took up all the available bandwidth; everything else could wait.

The second time she called his name, Jed put down the dish. They’d only been friends for 2 ½ years and lived together for several months but he’d talked to Mary and listened to her more than any other woman he’d ever been with and he didn’t recognize her tone of voice. It was subtly different than any tone she’d used before and the unfamiliarity of that, coupled with its emergence from their bedroom, unobscured by the staticky sound of the shower, was arresting. There’d been a hint of insistence that he responded to almost without thinking about it; he dried his hands on a dishtowel and walked into the bedroom. She was standing just outside the bathroom in her surprisingly ratty blue robe and worn slippers; her hair was unbrushed but the curls were caught back with a barrette and he thought she looked pale and tired, even more than the night before. She’d been quiet, home late and had picked at her dinner, waved away the wineglass. He’d thought she might fall asleep next to him on the couch but she’d huddled at the other end, still but not as relaxed as she generally was. Plum had paced before her a few minutes, then made herself a purring lump near Mary’s feet. He’d imagined she’d had a hard day, had had to deliver bad news or deal with a terminal prognosis and she’d talk to him when she was good and ready. He’d learned pressing her was pointless and that she’d usually speak readily enough if he just waited a little while.

“Mary?” he said, her name the whole question. She glanced at him and then away. He was starting to feel nervous now; there was no precedent for her behavior. He took a breath, not too deep, but intended to give him a sliver of calm without telegraphing to her his rapidly ratcheting stress. She looked back at him and he couldn’t understand the expression in her dark eyes but she regarded him steadily now.

“I, I’m pregnant,” she said.

“Oh. Jesus.” 

He wanted to pause the moment, to be able to try and figure out what exactly he felt, but that wasn’t an option. In fact, it seemed like one of those moments when time unhelpfully sped way the hell up, so that his own emotions blurred as they raced all around him, making it even harder to divine what Mary felt through his own Impressionist emotional maelstrom, much more Monet than Manet, but without any serenity. Before he could say anything else, Mary started talking again.

“I’m three weeks late, so I took a test yesterday and another today. They’re both positive.”

His own emotions were taking on shapes Jed could recognize: the jagged edge of surprise, the rising arc of excitement, joy’s perfect bubble. There was a thread of fear but it was composed more of uncertainty than apprehension. In retrospect, he could appreciate that his response to Eliza’s similar, earlier announcement had been primarily related to the idea of the baby-who-would-be-Owen and not so much that it was Eliza who was pregnant, whom he could love as his baby’s mother now as well as his wife. To know Mary was pregnant was a pleasure of an unanticipated degree, his focus on her and much less on the future baby. But Mary herself did not seem happy—her voice was strained, more so than when Owen had fallen from the playground slide and broken his wrist or on any of the myriad bad workdays when a patient took a turn for the worse, when they’d gotten caught in an ice storm driving to Manchester to see her mother and nearly skidded off the highway. She looked tense and drawn, bracing herself for something. Was it his response? She’d spoken flatly, had said very little actually, and that he did recognize as a sign of her distress. This was one of those times that they’d both always remember, the before and after like the two halves of an apple falling apart after the knife struck. He had to be careful. Really fucking careful.

“Mary, I know we have to talk, but could I, can I just hold you for a little while?” he asked. 

He wanted to feel her in his arms, her face pressed against his neck or bent to nestle against his chest, but he did not want to presume or demand. And he did not want to feel her stiffen or shake him off if he simply walked over and embraced her. He could hardly think of a time she had looked more in need of a hug but he had been wrong in his life about important stuff too many times and he couldn’t risk it, this moment they would always remember, on a guess—it was simply best to ask. Mary ducked her head and it was enough of a nod that he walked over and folded his arms around her lightly; when she stepped in to him, he tightened his hold and felt her exhale against his bare neck, the open throat of his unbuttoned henley. She hadn’t showered yet, so he only smelled the faintest hint of mint toothpaste and then just sleepy Mary; she’d laughed and called him an unrepentant romantic when he told her she reminded him of a flower he could never quite recall the name of but it was true.

He was a little taken aback by the warm surge of possession he felt holding her, the thought that he held the woman who would be his wife, the mother of his child so primal that he knew Charlotte would say there was plenty to unpack there. The shock of Mary’s announcement was fading much more quickly than he would have imagined; he discovered he was actually deeply satisfied, proudly content that she should be pregnant, though they hadn’t planned it and they’d only spoken in generalities about having children (plural) in the (indeterminate) future. He’d only felt this intensity of desire before for fucking, but there was nothing really lustful about his urge now; he only wanted to hold her and breathe her in, to stroke her tangled hair, make her know in the gentlest ways how much she belonged with him, how he wanted her to belong to him and he to her. He wondered if it were some great flooding of oxytocin, drenching his neurons like mead, but he didn’t care—he just needed to touch her and tell her in every way he could what she meant to him. She seemed a little looser, sagged against him softly and he moved so he could talk quietly in her ear.

“I love you, Mary, I love you so much. I’m sorry for before, you surprised me-- I never thought it could happen so easily, without even trying… with Owen, it wasn’t so easy,” he said. She shifted, shuddered a little and he drew back to look at her. She was still so pale with shadows beneath her dark eyes and she looked a little pinched around the mouth.

“Maybe this isn’t so easy either, I know, but my Grandma Rosalie would say you’re looking mighty peaky and you haven’t had any breakfast yet,” Jed added. He thought back to Eliza’s pregnancy, did a little math, and thought seven weeks made it very likely. “Do you have morning sickness, have you been throwing up at all?”

“Maybe a little,” she replied but he could tell she was hedging, just waited. “I threw up three times yesterday at work and this morning too. Pretty much all week.”

“Oh, Mary, I’m so sorry. Let me get you some tea and toast, go back to bed and I’ll bring it on a tray and then we can talk about all of this,” he said. When they were on the other side of this, when and not at all if, he would tell her how fragile and diffident she had been, how he’d wondered at this new Mary he’d never seen before amid all the other faces she’d shown him.

“Sweetheart, will you tell me how you feel?” he asked about a half hour later. She’d eaten most of the buttered toast and sipped at the tea he’d liberally doctored up with milk and sugar; now he sat beside her on their bed and let his hand rest on her hip. He needed to see her face and they needed some actual physical distance to really have this conversation but part of him wanted to be lying right behind her, the big spoon, her loose hair tickling his neck, or in that classic childbirth class position with her sitting between his splayed legs, his chest and arms a chair around her. 

“I don’t know,” she said but he heard it in her voice. She did know.

“I think you do, Mary. Just tell me, we’ll figure it out, okay?”

“It’s not okay, it won’t be, I screwed it all up,” she blurted.

“How did you screw anything up?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“The timing’s all wrong, we’re not ready for this and Owen, the wedding, I don’t know how… It’s too much, you were just saying how stressed it makes you to think about talking to Eliza about moving, you didn’t want this, you might…” she said, the words hesitant and then less so, stumbling over each other. 

He thought about how and where they’d met, how she’d said “you” so many times as the focus of her concern and what it could mean. He’d allowed the thought to cross his mind before, how his addiction, even in remission, would continue to haunt him, them, unwelcome but present in his new marriage just as it had been in the former one. But this time it was intrusive, grasping him, cold and sharp and painful because he couldn’t blame her for the fear.

“Do you think I’m going to use again? Is that it? Because I won’t, Mary. I promise you that and if that’s not enough, I’ll do whatever you want, toxes, I’ll see Charlotte weekly again,” he said. 

He’d thought he would feel angrier at her for worrying but he really just felt ashamed and guilty and sad, that she would take so little joy in her pregnancy because she thought he’d relapse because of it, because he couldn’t handle it. He did still want to use, unpredictable odd flashes of fierce longing for the pills, that moment when the narcotic pulled straight everything jangled and rumpled into a silken skein he could wind, but it happened infrequently, more manageably. He had learned to ride it out, to accept it would happen and didn’t have to mean imminent disaster. But Mary couldn’t know that, just had to trust him every day; every day, it felt like she did but this, today was not everyday anymore and she wasn’t only trusting herself to him anymore. And maybe the reality of that was too much in a way that the abstract children, a trio distant at the end of a long beach, treble voices from a green backyard, had not been.

“What? No, no, Jed,” she said, making a sound that was almost a laugh, that emphasized how little she’d considered his addiction in her distress. She reached her hand out to him, an entreaty of sorts. “No, I didn’t think about that. I don’t, that’s, that’s not what’s scaring me. It’s Owen, I don’t see how this will work, I don’t see how we make it work, I should never...”

“For the life of me, Mary, I don’t know what you mean then. And you didn’t “do” anything or screw anything up, this isn’t another immaculate conception—we made love and I got you pregnant because your birth control didn’t work. We’re both physicians, we are both well aware of what could mess with your pill and sometimes, it’s just a fluke. This isn’t only your responsibility. And I know we didn’t plan it this way, but it doesn’t feel like a screw-up or a mistake to me. At all. But maybe you don’t want,” he broke off. 

He was a coward, avoidant, but it felt too hard to say out loud, “maybe you don’t want a baby, my baby?” because it could be true and if it was, he would just have to deal. He wanted to marry Mary, not simply have children with her, and he already had a child. If she didn’t want any, he would accept it. Most women said they wanted children but she could have changed her mind, people did. 

“No, I do want, I do want a baby with you, our baby…I want this baby. I’ve always wanted to have children with you, Jed. Honestly, it was your most attractive feature when I first met you, how devoted you were, are, to Owen, and I was happy, relieved when you talked about wanting to have more children sometime. I thought maybe you would feel like you were done with Owen. But I barely had an idea about how it was going to work after we got married, really being Owen’s stepmother and not just your nice girlfriend Mary who’s always around, how we could move from this apartment and risk unsettling Owen, and now, I can’t see how to make it all, any of it, work.”

They were doing it again, Jed thought with the more insightful part of his brain that was not dealing with assuming she was worrying he’d relapse or reject him, they were doing that thing where even though she was upset, really upset, Mary was starting to console him. It was the initial dynamic of their relationship from that day at the suboxone clinic and it wasn’t going to be enough for a healthy marriage; he’d had that insight even without Charlotte’s help and he remembered the pleased look on his therapist’s face when he offered it up, that glance that said “You get it, you’re doing the work, this is working.” He didn’t want this conversation with Mary to go that way, only that way, and he also didn’t think she could manage it; she was starting to look pale again and a little sweaty. It might not work, she might throw up anyway, but he held out her lukewarm tea to her.

“Take some sips of this, okay? Slow. You need to get out in front of the nausea, I think. We’re going to make this work, our family, Mary, not just because we have to, because we want to. I want… I want whatever you want,” he finished. It sounded a little clumsy but it was true. She’d call him on it though.

“That, what does that mean, though? How can you want what I want? We’re different people, Jed, and we have to be honest about it, we’re not both 22 and naïve about true love solving everything. This is real life, I think this is the realest life gets.”

“I want you, I want you to be happy, however, whatever we have to do to make you feel good, safe… for you to know without having to think about it that I’m always going to be there **for** you. I trust you, I know you—you’ll want me to be happy too, you’ll want me to be happy first. I’ve never met someone whose every decision is so inspired by ‘The Gift of the Magi,’” Jed replied.

“But Owen comes first,” Mary interjected. 

She paused and the statement hung there, a banner over them. “You’ve always said that and I’ve always agreed, but now I don’t know how it can work anymore. We can’t stay here with two children, not really, but how will you give up being three blocks away from your son, being able to run over in the middle of the night if Eliza calls you?” 

Jed knew she didn’t only mean the apartment, she meant how would he balance two children with two different mothers, how could they have one family with two parts, one fixed, one always moving. Would Owen always need more and would that mean Mary’s child, children, always got less? He decided to just stick with the apartment question at face-value for now. There were hours and days to have the rest of the conversation and Charlotte worked in a group; she could find them someone to help if they couldn’t figure it out alone.

“Mary, we were going to have to deal with that at some point—or Eliza might have decided to move herself, we’ve already been talking about the whole private school thing. I won’t like being further away from Owen, but it’s unrealistic to think we’ll live this close to him until he’s 18,” he said. Owen at 18 seemed inconceivable but he was old enough to know the years would fly; it was only minutes that seemed long.

“And, he comes first when it’s between Owen and my work. Or Owen and the drugs, Christ. Always. But I don’t think I have to sacrifice you to make him happy. You make him happy too and having a father who is stable and happily married is good for him,” Jed added. Charlotte had made similar points over the past six months but they felt true for the first time today, no longer a justification for falling in love with Mary, agreeing to marry her when she asked since she’d said “I don’t know if you’re ever going to feel worthy enough, that you deserve to be happy again, so I will because you are and you do and I want to be your wife.” Becoming his wife had troubled her not at all, not even with the addiction; she’d shown off her sapphire engagement ring proudly to her friends and colleagues and he’d smiled to himself to remember how it had been all she’d worn the first 24 hours after he slid it on her finger. If he hadn’t had Owen… he couldn’t think that way, his son meant everything to him and he didn’t think he would have come through the addiction, the rehab, wouldn’t be a man Mary wanted, without him. This wasn’t going to work out easily but they could still find a balance, he knew it even if she didn’t right now.

“What will he call me? He has a mother, I can’t be his mommy, I’m not, but how can he call me Mary and our child not learn to do the same? What are we going to do, to say, when he has to leave and our baby stays with us? How is it not going to hurt him? I keep imagining his face when we tell him he has to leave, Eliza can’t just stay here with him. I love him too, even if it’s not the same as you and Eliza. It’s not that there aren’t answers, I just, I get so stuck, I just didn’t think we had to figure it out so soon. I don’t know how to do this,” Mary said and as she finished, she started to cry a little. He scooted up a little closer so he could take her in his arms again to soothe her. He felt her tears soaking into his shirt, hot and then quickly cool.

He had to admit, she had valid concerns about how a blended family would function. It had been implausible that the current arrangement could work long-term—either he or Eliza or both of them would remarry and the chances were good both of them would have another child, but after the tremendous upheaval his addiction and the subsequent divorce and treatment had caused, neither he nor his ex-wife had been eager to discuss a future next chapter. A more demanding, less compassionate woman than Mary would have pushed for some kind of conversation, if not an outright resolution, months ago, but she hadn’t and so they hadn’t. And now because she’d had two courses of antibiotics back to back a couple of months ago for a bad case of bronchitis shading into pneumonia she’d just worked straight through wearing a mask at work for weeks or because she’d forgotten two pills after a bad call night, she was pregnant and there was a deadline. Well, multiple deadlines really but he didn’t think she was primarily concerned about the wedding, though he made a mental note to return to that as well. He and Eliza had had a big splashy wedding with no expense spared for anything Eliza, her parent’s only daughter, had set her heart on or even expressed a passing interest in, so he wasn’t too bothered or excited by the idea of another big event. But it would be Mary’s only wedding and now it wasn’t going to go the way she had imagined or planned. He just wanted to marry her but she deserved to want a wedding, peonies instead of lilies, a swing band or a tower of cupcakes, a dress she’d dreamed of instead of one that masked or emphasized the baby in her belly.

Mary was settling down again and he pulled back to look at her. Her eyes were pink from crying but she looked less contained and also less desperate, more like herself. He stroked a finger across her cheekbone, felt the difference between the tearstain and her soft skin, pushed a loose tendril back. He could feel the subtle change in her as he touched her, how she relaxed and sought him, and he felt such a deep tenderness for her, such glad relief that given all she knew of him, he was still the one who she loved most, who was her best comfort. He’d said to himself over and over that first night they ate overcooked soup at the hospital, the big windows indigo and black with the night: don’t fuck this up, Jed. It seemed, so far, he was doing a better than average job as he looked at her face, the lack of tension in her shoulders, the palm she rested on his thigh.

“You know, you don’t have to answer all these questions by yourself, Mary, you’re not really supposed to. And you don’t have to always be the most flexible person around here—Owen is a resilient little boy and you can, you should ask more of me,” Jed said. It wasn’t her nature, but everyone changed and becoming a wife, stepmother and mother within a year was a lot for anyone to take on; maybe it would be enough for her to start to ask for help, not just accept what he offered. She smiled at him, a little smile that said “You’re right” and “I’ll try” and “I like that you know me so well, I like it so much.”

“Then, maybe you could get me some more toast, with marmalade this time? And let me know when you’re free this week or next so when I call—I hoped, I wanted you to come to the ultrasound, I want to schedule it when you can come. And after that, you need to call Eliza, we have to sit down and talk, the three of us. How’s that?” she asked, a brighter Mary he recognized but with a different degree of vulnerability. 

She’d let him in to a place he hadn’t known existed. He wouldn’t fuck that up either, or at least, he’d make a concerted effort not to. Charlotte frequently reminded him to not be so black and white about relationships and never smirked when she said it. She was a very good therapist. 

Once upon a time, nearly 3 years ago, Mary had told him he could be okay and she’d been so much more than right. He’d make sure he was at this ultrasound and every other and that he talked to Eliza. And he’d call the venue on the Vineyard and see if they could move up the date. He didn’t want much for the wedding but he realized he did want Mary on a cedar wood deck overlooking the Sound, the way the light would come down and back from the water to dapple her, the look she would give him when she brushed back the hair the wind had loosened, her veil discarded. He wanted to see his son and nephew in matching seersucker blazers that their mothers would fuss over and his niece looking too old already in a long dress, a wavering memory emerging of his sister in her hazel eyes, the bright flag of Lucy’s auburn hair. He wanted half a dozen pieces of crystallized ginger in colored wrappers in his coat pocket saved only for Mary when the children asked for candy and he shooed them away. He wanted to taste the sweet warmth of it in her mouth when he kissed his wife before she reminded him they were wanted inside where everyone would secretly wonder why he was such a lucky son-of-a-bitch. He would too-- the whole night, every night. And Mary would always smile at him if he mentioned it, even more if he had already sorted the laundry and put the burp cloths to soak, and was lying on the couch with a very small person trying very hard to lift her head from his chest, to look at her father.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third installment of my increasingly non-gritty, non-edgy DeQuincey's iPad series, where Jed is in recovery from opiate addiction and he and Mary are doctors at a hospital in Boston. The addiction has receded, if not disappeared, but now the larger question is how Jed and Mary can deal with forming a blended family. I don't want Eliza to be the evil ex-wife, so she's not, and Jed is going to stay in therapy for a long, long time.
> 
> The title is from Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight," because Coleridge also used a bunch of laudanum and the poem is beautiful and talks about a child.


End file.
